The Paris-based startup confirmed on Friday that it had been acquired by the advertising and search giant.

Sparrow said in a statement announcing the buyout:

We care a lot about how people communicate, and we did our best to provide you with the most intuitive and pleasurable mailing experience.

Now we're joining the Gmail team to accomplish a bigger vision — one that we think we can better achieve with Google.

The company said it would continue to make its software available to its users despite its new daddy being Google. But, it also noted that Sparrow would - within weeks - be subjected to same Ts&Cs as the rest of the Google family.

Sparrow makes an email app client specifically to run Gmail on Apple's iPhone handsets, which the outfit said it would continue to support. Its product page on the App Store notes: "As the team works on new projects, there will be no new features released for the Sparrow apps, other than minor maintenance and bug fixes."

Inevitably, some Sparrow punters expressed their disappointment at the acquisition.

"Sold out to Google - way to screw all your loyal customers," said one happy subscriber on Apple's Mac App Store. ®